Port of Valencia approves USD 1.4B expansion

24 October 2018

Port of Valencia approves USD 1.4B expansion

The board of directors of the Port Authority of Valencia (APV) has provisionally approved the conditions for a tender for the construction and operation of a new 5.0 M TEU container terminal through a northern extension of the port. The new terminal will have an area of about 137 ha and requires an investment of approximately EUR 1.2 B (USD 1.4 B), split between public contributions – EUR 400 M (USD 460 M) – and private – from EUR 800 M to EUR 900 M (USD 920 M to 1.0 B). In September 2017, MTBS was selected amongst eight other consultant firms by the APV to prepare the feasibility study for this expansion project.

The APV’s president Aurelio Martínez said that the project would be the port’s “most important” development project in the coming years because “other projects will not involve a EUR 1.2 B (USD 1.4 B) investment”. Martínez and the APV’s general director Francesc Sánchez believe that the potential rise in container traffic will place the port among the largest three ports in Europe.

The terminal is designed to take advantage of the strengths of Valencia as an import / export and transit port and to accommodate the expected increase in container traffic until 2050. Sánchez added that “a terminal is not created suddenly” and that the new proposal is a result of well-made analyses of market circumstances, including the capacity of current terminals, the projections of future demand, freights and transhipments, the development in vessel sizes, and the possibilities of intermodal connections. He also said that a conservative analysis of current industry trends estimates that the port could have a capacity problem within six or seven years.

The future container terminal of the northern extension of the port of Valencia will have a berthing dock of up to 1,970 m in length with a draft of -20.0m alongside and a maritime access channel with a depth of -22.5m.

APV would like to award the construction project before June 2019 and deliver the first phase within two years. The concession period is set at 35 years for proposals for partial occupation, with the possibility of extension to 50 years for those that propose full occupation. The board of directors’ final approval for the project to go ahead will be given in November.